Minecraft is one of if not the most popular games in the world, allowing players to explore a massive world that acts as a personal sandbox of sorts for them to gather resources and build great structures.
One playstyle that is quite popular nowadays though is speed-running the game. In Minecraft, a long-term goal is to fight and defeat the Ender Dragon, and normally it is a goal achieve once the player has been playing for a while and has all the necessary loot. However players can actually fight the dragon much earlier, currently, the world record is a little over 12 minutes.
But how would someone be able to complete Minecraft in such a short amount of time? I’ll go through the basic route players take when speed-running, and explain why they do it.
Part 1: Finding a Village
Villages are randomly a generated groups of buildings that can be found all over a Minecraft world. While you can still gather all the necessary materials legitimately for a speedrun, villages are a great resource for materials.
- Blacksmiths can have great armor and tools for you.
- There are hay bales everywhere so you can get wheat to make plenty of bread.
- You can try to kill the iron golem for some guaranteed iron.
- And there are plenty of beds not only for setting a spawn point in case you die but aiding in the Ender Dragon fight.
Step 2: Creating a Nether Portal
In order to reach the Ender Dragon, you are required to go to the Nether to kill enemies known as Blazes for blaze rods. and gather a number of ender pearls so you can combine them to create eye of ender, at least 12 are needed to activate the portal.
While normally you are supposed to mine obsidian with a diamond pick, it is also possible to build one with a bucket by using water and a lava pool.
Step 3: Getting Materials for the Eyes of Ender
In older versions, players would have to kill Endermen in order to obtain ender pearls. However, in version 1.16 players can just barter with a new mob known as Piglins.
By wearing gold armor and throwing gold at them Piglins will toss a number of useful items including ender pearls. On top of that gold is decently common in the Nether, not only as a minable resource but if you find a bastion you can find full blocks of gold to aid in bartering.
While Piglins can be found all over the nether, you will need to find a Nether Fortress to obtain blaze rods, although they are usually pretty common throughout the nether so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue, also feel free to loot any cheats you find if they have useful items.
Step 4: Finding a Portal
Once you have gathered enough eye of ender, you are now ready for the end. To find a portal, you must throw the eye of ender so they will guide you to a stronghold and lead you to a portal.
This can either be a short and sweet process or a long and repetitive part of the run. Sometimes you could stumble across a portal by accident, and it will only need a few eyes to active. Other times portals can be thousands of blocks away and sometimes the eyes will break, and if enough of them break to the point where you don’t have enough for the portal, you’re screwed.
It is worth noting that while very rare, portals are able to spawn with all eyes, meaning theoretically you could just go straight to the end right as you spawn. However, I personally wouldn’t get your hopes up about that.
Step 5: Fighting the Ender Dragon
Finally, there is the fight with the ender dragon herself. Now you can totally fight the dragon the intended way by shooting the crystals and attacking her when she gets to the exit portal. Alternatively, you can use place the beds you got from the village on top of the exit portal and defeat the dragon that way, you do need to careful as the blasts can easily kill you in the process, but after using enough beds as explosives the battle has been won, and your run is complete.
Conclusion
Overall Minecraft is a really interesting game to speedrun and it makes sense that it is as popular of a speed game as it is. Of course due to the whole randomness of the world generation runs will vary, although I still hope this guide gave you a good idea of how to run the game if you are interested.
I’m uncertain about how 1.17 will effect how people speedrun Minecraft with it’s new world generation and all, although I’m sure most of these steps will remain the same with future updates.
I am not much of a gamer myself but my friends and family love to play. I know Minecraft is very popular so this was interesting to read! Working with children, this is a great blog to read up on since the boys I watch love to play and now I will be able to talk with them more about it.
Though I have never really taken the time to beat or put many hours into Minecraft. I do enjoy watching others play the game. I think it would be cool to watch you do steam yourself doing a Minecraft speed run. I think either getting the eyes of ender has to be the most time consuming and difficult part of doing a minecraft speed run, behind being the Ender dragon.
Great breakdown you have here! I have never thought about doing a speed run of the game, but this guide is so great maybe i’ll try it out. I usually just play with friends in a world where we build cool buildings and areas. I always thought beating the ender dragon looked kind of difficult to accomplish, but the way you broke it down made it pretty simple for me to understand. I also agree with the previous comment that it’d be cool to see you do a speed run of minecraft.